Choice quotes and a bit of Irony from the Globe and Mail’s Book Section
Two choice quotes from two very good reviews in the latest Toronto Globe and Mail Books section, cut and placed here for your delectation:
from Joan Thomas’s review of James Meek’s We are now Beginning our Descent:
"Bastian…seems to rise out of the unspooling of a thesis in Meek’s mind rather than out of the natural trajectory of the story. Sentence by sentence, though, We are Now Beginning our Descent is funny, deft, accurate, a provocation to thought and imagination. In a 2005 interview, Meek said, " There is nothing sweeter than a description that flies to the thing it describes and fits it, like a key hurled from ten feet slotting into its lock."
and from Laura Penny’s write-up of Lolita:
"Whenever the public collapsed Nabokov with Humbert, their inability to understand how art works offended him far more than their absurd allegations of pedophilia. He said " To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth. Every great writer is a great deceiver, but so is that arch-cheat nature."
And a taste of irony: Andrew Pyper in his essay Bust that blockbuster! suggests that the cold logic of Hollywood studios though trickling down to the publishing offices, vis recent HarperCollins and Random House CEO casualties, will never compute in the book business. Tinsel town marketing departments know
"that a whiz-bang trailer, a Super Bowl spot and tie-ins with McDonald’s can put bums in seats even if the movie is a stinker. But in publishing, I am glad to say, nobody still knows anything. Readers remain different animals from popcorn moviegoers, and I believe always will."
Scant pages before this pronouncement, Natasha Cooper, pans the latest ‘three minute pop-song’ of a James Bond novel Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks, wishing instead that Ian McEwan had been chosen to write it. Despite the stench, it stubbornly sets sales records second only to Harry Potter, and sits comfortably atop bestseller lists in all English speaking countries around the world.
